King Oliver in the Groove(s)

By

Nat Hentoff

Updated July 25, 2007 11:59 p.m. ET

When I was in my teens, reading about the storied sites of early jazz, I envied the Chicagoans of the 1920s who were hip enough to spend nights at the Lincoln Gardens caf&eacute; where King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was in residence, recently joined by Oliver's young New Orleans prot&eacute;g&eacute;, Louis Armstrong. But the few recordings I could find sounded as if time had worn the music down and dim, including the clicks and scratches of those used early discs.